Where Were You When ...

America was attacked on 9-11-2001?

Would you share, briefly, where you were?  I believe this is one of those pivotal moments.  My mother's generation all remember where they were when they heard the news of Pearl Harbor or the news about President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr..  I remember some stark moments -- when President Reagan was shot, when John Lennon was shot, and 9-11.

We had just moved to Virginia and my husband wasn't finished in-processing at the Pentagon.  However, he had been asked to come to a conference out in Maryland so was out of the building that day.  My daughter was at school, my son was with me.  We were sitting in the line to get the oil changed in my car.  I had let him out of his car seat and he was bouncing around.  I heard the news on the radio about the twin towers.  Then I heard the news about the Pentagon.  I ordered him into his chair, called the school and said, "I'm coming to get my daughter."  I called my husband's widowed mother to tell her I absolutely KNEW that he wasn't in the building that day.  I picked up my daughter, and we went home to wait.  Praise God, we had just moved into our rental house and didn't have any TV service.  My children never saw the footage until it was history.

My husband finally made it home about 8 hours later.  Since then, we have a family plan, a meeting place, and a family member not on the East Coast who is the "check in" person.

We explained in simple terms to our children what had happened.  The very next morning my 4 year old son prayed, "Dear God, please change the terrorists' hearts."

What about you?  Where were you?  How are you changed?  This is not a place to rant, but to share some of the grief that many have carried since then.

Let's Roll

I didn't comment on September 11 about the anniversary. I'm not sure I can add anything meaningful. For people who lived in Washington DC at the time it was eerie. We're so used to air traffic overhead. For a few days, the only air traffice overhead was the sound of fighter jets protecting our airspace.

When I was in the Air Force and our conversations were interrupted on base by the sound of the F-16's lifting off we'd pause and count. It wasn't as if we could talk over their roar. We all called it the Sound of Freedom. Sometimes it was a four-ship, sometimes an 8. It was always very cool.

My job was to defend the young men and women who found themselves on the wrong side of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It was a privilege to serve them because although none of them were completely innocent of all charges (none of us usually are), all of them deserved a fair trial. When I was called to defend a case at Bitburg though, it was tougher. The young man was part of a group of jet mechanics who had been importing drugs from Amsterdam, and using them. He was getting high, and then working on jets. My husband was a pilot. See the difficulty?

Yet, our justice system is dedicated to the proposition that everyone deserves a fair trial. So I made sure that he got one too. I tried to get him to plead guilty so he'd get credit on his sentence. He refused. He was more afraid of street justice back home in Detroit (if word got out that he cooperated) than serving time in the federal prison system. He knew the system was fair, and would protect his rights. He knew his 'hood would not.

On 9-11, none of the terrorists on those planes survived. Yet, if any of them had survived, they would have been entitled to defense in the best justice system in the world -- at no cost if they didn't have any money. They tried to destroy something they fundamentally did not understand -- that we choose to live under a government that guarantees us the right to speak, worship, and assemble freely.

That's what I want to remember about 9-11. That no matter how horrible the acts or how tragic the loss of life, it did not change what America stands for.

/kw